European Green Deal

The European Green Deal is intended to make the European Union remarkably more environmentally friendly. A part of the target is to reach net zero carbon dioxide emissions from year 2050. An intermediate target is to reach a reduction of the emissions by 55% in the year 2030, compared to the base year 1990. Further target parts are the reduction of waste amounts, the longer useful life time of products and materials and an increase in reuse and recycling through the Circular Economy Package.

Sources: European Green Deal | EU-Commission (europa.eu)

Contribution of heat pumps and heat recovery

Lower carbon dioxide emissions are possible only if significantly lower amounts of fossile fuels are burnt for heating purposes. However, the heating purposes are the largest part of the energy use in the EU. So here, a major transformation is necessary. In this area, a conversion to sustainable energy sources is necessary, like biogas, ground source heat, electric power from water, wind and solar cells and much more. Heat pumps can be applied well for most of the heating tasks. If these heat pumps are powered by electrical energy from renewable sources, no emissions from consumption during the operation appear – this was the by far biggest part until now (Emissions). Some important things have to be considered here:

• It must be made possible to develop and produce a sufficient amount of heat pumps for the applications.
• Enough well matching refrigerants must be available resp. the heat pumps must be developed for the refrigerants being available for long term.
• The heat demand has to be reconsidered.
• In many cases, the heating temperature levels easily possible with fossile fuels are not really necessary.
• Heat insulation has to be applied to reduce the demand remarkably to make it possible to supply sufficient electric energy for operation of the many heat pumps.

• When making the ecobalances around the product heat pump, not only the emissions of the product have to be in the scope. Especially the emissions avoided by using the heat pump instead of fossile fuel heating will form the real picture in view of the green deal targets.

When evaluating heat recovery from refrigeration installations or use of industrial heat pumps to make process heat useful again, it is difficult to make ecobalancing clean and clear and to present it in a plausible way. This technology will increase complexity of some systems, but it is as important for the targets of the Green Deal. The potential for savings in emissions through use of heat pumps instead of fossile fuel burning is significantly higher than today's emissions from the use of refrigeration and heat pump systems are.